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her,
Maisie had told him.
    â€œYour great-aunt certainly led an interesting life,” the Woman in Pink said, and something in the way she said it made Maisie suspicious.
    â€œHow interesting can it be to be locked upstairs?” Maisie said.
    Felix looked up. “Like prisoners,” he said.
    â€œNot at all,” the Woman in Pink said, fiddling with her scarf. “Like guests.”
    Maisie watched her fiddling.
    â€œWhat exactly went on in The Treasure Chest?” Maisie asked. “Do you think Phinneas Pickworth is haunting it? Haunting the whole house maybe?”
    â€œNo, no. There are so many stories about Elm Medona. Why, some people believe that your great-aunt and her brother, Thorne—” She stopped abruptly.
    â€œThat they what?” Maisie asked.
    The Woman in Pink sighed. “Such lucky children,” she said. “Living among history.”
    Felix thought about Bleecker Street Playground, where he and Maisie had played together forever, and the long corridor in their apartment building where they rode their bikes on rainy days. He did not feel lucky at all. He just felt homesick.
    â€œOff with you now,” the Woman in Pink said, shooing them away like they were nothing more than flies.
    She opened a door in the Dining Room that led to the narrow servants’ stairway and their apartment.
    â€œThank you for the tour,” Felix remembered to say.
    The Woman in Pink wiggled her fingers at them, then closed the door firmly.
    Maisie and Felix stood at the bottom of the stairs for a few moments and pondered the rules of their new “home.” They weren’t allowed to play on the lawn until the last tour ended—and then only if an event wasn’t scheduled for that night. There was also a big calendar of mansion events that hung over their kitchen table. It was the only thing their mother had had time to hang up.
    â€œI hate it here,” Maisie said.
    â€œSo do I,” Felix said.
    â€œNothing to do,” Maisie said, starting up the stairs.
    â€œNowhere to go,” Felix added, following her.
    Maisie and Felix stepped into the family quarters with its plain furniture and paneled walls.
    She touched that shard of porcelain again. Usually, she and Felix didn’t keep secrets from each other. But what if she showed it to him and he made her march right back to the Woman in Pink and give it to her? What if he lectured her on right and wrong the way he sometimes did? No, Maisie decided. She would keep it to herself. For now.

    In New York, Maisie and Felix had slept in the same room divided by a scrim that their mother had kept from her actress days—
a struggling actress,
she always said now that she’d put acting behind her. A
scrim
was a drop curtain that looked opaque in some lights and transparent in others. They had fun playing with the lamps in their bedroom, rearranging them and turning them on and off for effect. But here they each had proper bedrooms that were blandly identical.
    Felix lay in bed trying to read, but the noises the house made were too distracting. It creaked. It sighed. It moaned. All he could think of were the things the Woman in Pink had hinted at: ghosts, and worse.
    â€œYou awake?” Maisie called from across the hall.
    â€œYes,” Felix said. He put down his book and put on his glasses.
    â€œCan I come in?” Maisie said.
    She didn’t wait for an answer. She just walked in with her curly hair all tangled and her face with crease marks from the waffle pattern on her blanket. The rain had cooled things down, and Maisie wore her favorite Mets polar fleece vest and flannel pajama bottoms. Felix shivered beneath the thin blanket in his faded madras shorts and yellow T-shirt that said CARMINE STREET POOL . He wished he’d bothered to rummage through the warmer clothes still packed in boxes.
    Maisie flopped down on the empty bed across from Felix.
    â€œMom must be having fun, huh?”